When I was really young, the women's national team wasn't on a grand media stage, so my role models were male basketball and male American football players.
Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around, but he carried it off so well.
It's good for kids to look up to sporting role models.
Athletes are given a really special platform. It's our duty, as athletes, to be role models.
Growing up, I really didn't have a lot of role models.
My family is mostly a chosen one. I've managed to invite some really amazing people into my life and they become family. Brothers, sisters, siblings, mentors, role models. And I like to live that way, where your family bleeds out into the larger community.
I want to play positive role models - women who mean something to other women.
The expectation was I would get married and become a mother and settle down. We didn't have any role models. We saw teachers and doctors and nurses, but I'm not a teacher, and there was no possibility of being a doctor or a nurse. I had to work and find my own way.
I had some great role models along the way. My on-field heroes were the great Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Willie Mays. I wanted to be like them on the field, and I am so damn proud to join them in the Hall of Fame.
Little girls and little boys need to have role models to look up to and know that, 'I'm not the first one. I'm not having to do this for the first time ever. Others have blazed the trail before me, and I can follow in their footsteps and do the same thing.'
